Do Quang Nghia's poetry in the collection Like Autumn is an emotional juggling with language. Feeling, he enters the world of words, looks, thinks and rearranges everything according to his own rules, under the shape of emotions, of nostalgia, of the longing for a foreign land.
Reading the first poems, the language of the poems makes us turn back to the first page, to read more information about the author. Because the language with its own rules, is both neat and professional, and breaks the rules and structures of common poetry.
Indeed, author Do Quang Nghia studied at Ilmenau Technical University (Germany) and Hanoi University of Science and Technology. Observers often use “block A people” or “technical people” to refer to authors who did not study literature or pursue a literary career but have a love and natural talent for poetry.
The poetry collection Like Autumns has a very unique structure and layout, unlike any other. Many poems do not have titles as is common. Most works when introduced to readers will be marked with an * at the top, as a start of a stream of emotions.
The poems of author Do Quang Nghia are also not outlined by dividing lines and rhyming familiarly. His poems sometimes spread out, spreading out endless emotions, with unlimited memories, thoughts and dreams about love, sometimes they are short, concise, condensed to the point of being startling. There are long verses that cover the page, and there are verses that are only one word.
The most special thing in Do Quang Nghia's poetry is the way he plays with words, juggling with language, following the rules of "block A people", so that each verse and poem reminds readers of calculation, logic, and rigor like an equation with a formula for finding a solution.
“... After the last farewell/There were still meetings/But we both knew/Before that/It was the last farewell”, or the verses, “Once I put the sun into poetry/Once I put poetry into the sun...”, “... You came and went/I forgot and went away/More than ten years, there is no way out...”...
Each poem is tightly structured, with a precise logic of rhyming language in its own way, like a demonstration between mathematical precision in rhyme and emotion.
Poetry of author Do Quang Nghia is imbued with human feelings.
There is the pain of a person living far from home, the experience of loss, the lingering pain of a broken love, the contemplation of gains and losses in life, the deep longing for family and loved ones, the lingering memories of the journey gone by...
In the places he went to, in the love he had, in the emotions he experienced, in love or nostalgia, all were left with decisive, straightforward, confronting and heavy language.
“...From what period of life did we lose joy?
From which life did I choose this life of wandering?
Why keep asking...?”
